Fordham is one of 28 colleges and universities to win a New Generation PhD matching grant, which aims to overhaul doctoral programs in the humanities to better prepare students for 21st-century job prospects within and outside of academia.

Eva Badowska, Fordham English faculty member and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

“The future of doctoral training in the humanities depends on innovative models that will deliver the competencies and skills that doctorate holders need to succeed in a variety of career pathways, in addition to traditional faculty lines,” said Eva Badowska, PhD, dean of GSAS and grant director, alongside co-director, Matthew McGowan, PhD, associate professor of classics.

“As a graduate school within a Jesuit university recognized for its strengths in the humanities, GSAS is uniquely situated to ask what it means truly to prepare our doctoral candidates for the fast-changing world of higher education and for the new knowledge economy,” Badowska said.

Historically, doctoral programs have prepared graduates solely for work in academia. However, with a 30 percent decline in academic job postings in the humanities since 2008, this singular focus is no longer realistic for students graduating from these programs.

The $25,000 planning grant, to be matched by an additional $25,000 from GSAS, will not only propose rethinking Fordham’s five doctoral programs in the humanities (classics, English, history, philosophy, and theology), but will also examine what a 21st-century PhD program at any institution should encompass. For instance, what advanced transferrable skills should be taught at the PhD level? Should skills such as collaborative teamwork and advanced digital proficiency be treated on a par with traditional emphases, such as mastery of field-specific knowledge and independent research skills?

In addition to Badowska and McGowan, the project includes a Core Planning Group and Constituent Advisory Group comprising GSAS faculty, current doctoral candidates, alumni, and community leaders who would benefit from hiring graduates with doctoral-level expertise.

At the end of the academic year, the group will produce a white paper detailing the proposed model.

“We want to rethink how we deliver the PhD at our University, but also make it scalable to other institutions and humanities programs,” said Melissa Labonte, PhD, associate dean of GSAS and associate professor of political science. “To do right by the students in these programs, we need to rethink the entire model. This planning grant will allow us to begin this process.”

A key part of the grant will address making doctoral programs in the humanities more inclusive of underrepresented, underserved, and marginalized communities, Labonte said. Within these groups, the percentage of students who enroll in a doctoral-level program has dropped precipitously in recent decades.

“We’re trying to find ways to counter this trend,” Labonte said. “This part of the grant falls very much in line with Fordham’s mission. If we’re going to embrace progressivism and social justice models, then we have to think about how PhD programs in the humanities will address the needs of people from underserved communities.”

The NEH announced the Next Generation PhD grants winners on Aug. 9 as part of $79 million in grants for 290 humanities projects and programs across the country, an initiative the group undertook to mark its 50th anniversary year.

Fordham's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences sponsors an innovative and distinctive Fellowship in Higher Education Leadership that provides graduate students with a two-year experience working alongside the university's senior administrators such as GSAS Dean (and Fordham English faculty member) Eva Badowska, who created the program.

James Van Wyck

English PhD student James M. Van Wyck has been one of GSAS's first such fellows, and last year he helped to create GSAS Futures, a series of professional development and career-programming events. This year he is working on the curriculum of a Preparing Future Faculty program for Fordham graduate students, as well as on a program titled Public Scholarship for the Common Good.

Van Wyck has co-authored an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education with his fellow fellow (so to speak), Philosophy PhD student Joseph M. Vukov. "Give Us a Voice in Our Own Future" does more than describe the GSAS program and emphasize its uniqueness (they describe being the only graduate students in the room at meetings of Fordham's Task Force on the Future of Higher Education, at a university reaccreditation meeting, and at a discussion of the Council of Graduate Schools). Their article also issues a ringing call for graduate education across the country to incorporate graduate student voices into the ongoing discussion about the future of graduate education in the United States and beyond. Read it to see where that discussion is going, and to see how Fordham is helping to push that discussion forward.